


just as long as you don't look down

by Trojie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s09e01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here, Gen, Possession, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean just wants to keep his brother alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just as long as you don't look down

**Author's Note:**

> For my hc_bingo 2013 prompt 'suicide attempt'. This is not a nice fic. Set immediately after 9x01. [Title from 'Sleepeater' by Shihad](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCd5JPIkjhA)

It's the hardest thing Dean has ever done, to drive all the way back to the bunker and not tell Sam there's an angel riding shotgun in his skin. 

Because Dean _wants_ to tell him. Because he doesn't feel like he's protecting Sam, doing this. He doesn't feel like this is for the good of Sam. That stupid, self-righteous bit of him burned somewhere along the way, this last year, left for dead somewhere back down the road and a kind of bitter, empty honesty took its place. 

Dean's not doing this for Sam's good, he's doing it for his own. Because he's selfish, because he's a sad, lonely fuck who doesn't know how to live without his brother.

He wants to tell Sam the truth. He's tired of lying. But _because_ Dean's selfish, so damn selfish, because he knows how this story goes, he's holding onto the truth just a little bit longer. In the end he'll confess, he knows, and he also knows Sam will walk away. It's what Sam does. But if Dean tells him the truth right now Sam might _die._

Dean can deal with Sam hating him, he can. He'll have to, because he _can't_ deal with Sam being gone somewhere he can't bring him back from. Somewhere he can't follow.

 _Nobody can reverse it, nobody can deal it away_ keeps going around in Dean's head. Sam doesn't just want to leave, he wants to shut the door behind him and leave Dean behind. Every loophole Dean's ever exploited, Sam wants closed. Dean can't let him. There's no Dean if there's no Sam. And Dean's selfish.

Dean hauls Sam's giant, half-asleep ass out of the Impala and down the bunker steps and all the way to the hard mattress of the hard cot he'd colonised when they moved in, and pours him into it. He takes off Sam's boots and strips him out of his overshirt and takes as many things out of his trouser pockets as he can without leaving him weaponless. Dean knows how horrifying it is to wake up disoriented and not have a knife. The lockpick and the boxcutter and the Zippo, they can all go in a pile on the dresser - but Dean leaves him the knife.

Sam never did anything to the room, Dean realises, stepping back from the bed before he gives in to the urge to lay down with his brother and sleep for a week. Nothing on the walls, nothing on the desk except a stack of books of lore about demons. Nothing personal. All his clothes are still in his duffle, all his weapons are still in the Impala's trunk.

Maybe he didn't expect to be staying long. 

Sam mutters something and smacks his lips, and burrows his head into the pillow he's clutching like the teddy-bear he never had as a little boy (he had Dean instead, to snuffle into and clutch at with tiny hard fingers). He always sleeps like this, face-down arms-up legs-bent, when he's exhausted. Dean watches him, and tries to figure out what the hell to _do_ , when his brother wants to die and he wants to tell him the truth anyway.

'How is he even still alive?' Kevin asks, materialising out of thin air at Dean's side. Kid moves like a fucking ghost. And needs a shave, but at least he doesn't smell like a brewery any more.

'Damned if I know,' Dean says, which is a lie. Kevin looks up at him like he can tell. 'Not gonna lie to you, it was touch and go there for a while.' Always tell people you're not going to lie to them when you're doing it. Misdirection.

'Looks like it still is.' Kevin's giving Sam's still form a very long, appraising look that makes Dean kind of uncomfortable the same way the doctor at the hospital reeling off Sam's injuries had. When people who know stuff tell you things, it's like they're shutting down any chance of dumb luck and pig-ignorant determination working, and let's face it, Dean's pretty sure dumb luck and pig-ignorant determination are the only things that have got him this far.

'Well jeez, don't sugarcoat it,' Dean says, wanting him to leave. He just wants to sit here with Sam and pretend they're alone.

But Kevin rolls his eyes. 'You think he's gonna just accept this, Dean? You think angelic possession is something Sam can just live with? I get that you didn't have many options, but Dean, you gotta tell him, as soon as you can. As soon as he wakes up.' 

Dean recoils. 'What? That's not -'

Kevin sighs. 'I am a freaking prophet of God, Dean, I see things. Usually things that, y'know, shake up the natural order as dictated by Heaven? Remember? Which you and your brother have this tendency to be at the epicentre of? Last time I checked, dodging Death was still a pretty rule-bending thing to do. Even for you.'

'I didn't -'

'Yeah you did. I saw it. And anyway, dude, he was pushing one of the Great Levers and he didn't follow through on it. You expect me to believe he could have just walked away from that?' Kevin's expression is hard. Not for the first time, Dean thinks _this kid is fucked up. Just like me._ But fucked-up-just-like-me doesn't mean Kevin understands.

'He didn't want to,' Dean mutters, looking at his brother lying in bed and still breathing and still living and still unaware that Dean's let a fucking supernatural creature ride him like the worst kind of parasite there ever was. 

Beside him Kevin sighs. 'I know.'

'So I got him help,' Dean says. It sounds so sensible when he says it like that. He wants to leave it like that.

Kevin walks over to the bed and runs his hand very very lightly over Sam's shoulder. He looks really freaking old right now. Old and angry and sad, all in one. Chuck looked like that too, by the end, but he wasn't nineteen, so he wore it better. 'So you let an angel into his body, and now you're planning on lying about it. Dean, you ever _been_ possessed?'

'He was going to die!' Dean snaps, and no, he hasn't. The very freaking idea fills him with a cold loathing. 'He _wanted_ to die. He was about to take Death's freaking bony hand and walk the fuck off this mortal coil. He was about to _leave_ -' and he realises way too late that his voice is an angry choke and his eyes are burning and his face is wet - he's crying. 

Kevin looks up at him and nods at the bed, where Sam's hooked-up too-long legs make a space for sitting. Dean sits. 

Kevin sits too. The pair of them stare at the blank wall Sam never put anything on, just bare bricks, and listen to Sam breathe behind them. 

'I knew he wasn't right,' Dean says scratchily after a while. 'After … after Hell, and being soulless, and the hallucinations, and everything. But I guess, I thought we could pull it all out and get rid of it and he'd be okay again. I thought we - I thought _Cas_ \- had done it. I thought he was good again. And it turns out he thinks he deserves to die? He kept freaking talking about light at the end of the goddamn tunnel like he thought _I_ was the one who needed it, and it turns out like this?'

'You can't salt and burn something like that,' Kevin says. 'Sometimes the monsters aren't out there, they're - .'

'Don't,' Dean growls. 'I am fucking sick of metaphors.'

Kevin shrugs. 'Sure. Just saying. This isn't a hunt. Dean, he doesn't need you to save him from this. You can't save him from this. So you gotta fucking tell him the truth.'

'If he rejects Ezekiel -'

'You have to take that chance.' Kevin's eyes are deep and dark and sure.

'I can't lose him again,' Dean growls. Behind him, Sam makes a soft noise and moves in whatever dream he's having. His knee nudges up against Dean's ass. 

'You tell him the truth, you might not. But Dean, seriously, how do you not see the pattern here? Every time you lie to him, this shit gets worse. And you can't look me in the eye and tell me you don't understand the concept of tying your self-worth to another person's opinion,' Kevin says.

Dean laughs. The idea of Sam needing Dean the way Dean needs him is pretty much insane. Sam's been able to live without Dean before. Sam can function like that. Dean can't. 

'Fine,' Kevin says, and stands up. 'Y'know, Dean, humans are breakable. Take it from me.'

He leaves.

Sam rolls onto his side. Dean stares at the wall. 

Dean recognises that Kevin is at breaking point here too and maybe his advice on Sam was legit but he wasn't just talking about Sam, either. Dean has had a kinda shaky relationship with other people and the truth for years, Kevin included. 

He just wants everyone to be safe. Why is it so fucking hard to just keep everyone safe? 

Sam mumbles and flings out a hand - it thumps into Dean's hip and Dean reaches down and squeezes the way he used to when Sam was little and the nightmares were dumb but they still scared the bejeezus out of him, and Dean knew what was outside in the dark but he had to pretend he didn't, because one of them had to not be frightened. 

Thing about nightmares like that is you can't just tell a little kid they're not real and to stop being so goddamn stupid. It doesn't work like that. Dad gave Sam a .45 at age nine to scare away the closet monster, but Dean had been knocking over trashcans outside motel rooms for years pretending to fight the shadows outside the window while Dad wasn't there. 

Dean's fucking sick of metaphors but the shadows are back and he can't just tell Sam they don't exist. They've caused enough damage to be real. And they're scaring Dean now, because of what they do to Sam. What they might make Sam do.

He stares at the wall. 

Sam dying and not being able to get him back is _all_ of Dean's nightmares. He clutches Sam's hand hard suddenly, reflexively, because he nearly did. Dean nearly lost him, again, after all this time. 

'Dean?' Sam says, groggily. 

'Sammy?' Dean twists around to look at him. 

Sam's a mess of stubble and night-sweat, bruise-purple in places and too pale underneath it, and Dean wants to bundle him up and hold him, be between him and the world forever, and he can't. 'Dean, what is it?'

'Sammy, I gotta tell you something,' he says, conscious of how rough his voice is. 'I … after the church, when you were sick, something happened, and I didn't have a choice, I had to -'

'Had to what?' Sam asks softly. Trusting.

'I'm sorry,' Dean whispers. And he tells him. He tells him about the coma, and the angels, about Cas. And about Ezekiel. 

'I couldn't,' he says when Sam shoves out of the bed, looking wild and betrayed, the whites of his eyes showing, hitting the far wall and stopping there, quivering. 'Sammy, I couldn't. You were gonna die if I didn't -'

'Didn't what? Trick me into _agreeing to possession?_ ' Sam spits. 'Agreeing to let something else into my body again?'

'Sam -'

But Sam's gone, out the door and gone into the dark bunker and Dean's left sitting on his bed clutching the soft old blankets in his hands. It takes the sound of a gunshot - muffled and far away - to snap him out of his daze, and then he _runs,_ terrified of what he's going to find. There are five more shots, like slaps in the face. Then silence. Dean's sick to his stomach.

It isn't what he's thinking. But.

Sam's in the firing range. Last time they were down here he took chunks out of the concrete and the target was bullet-hole free - now he's staring down the barrel of his Taurus at a cluster of six shots in the black-and-white outline of a head, and Dean is not reassured to see that his little brother's marksmanship is back on target. 

Sam's a good enough shot to know how to control his breathing even when he's angry, but the way his shoulders move tells Dean enough to know he shouldn't step any closer. 

'You know I killed people, right Dean?' Sam asks. 'When I was possessed? You saw the tapes, you helped clean up a sticky corpse or five. You know what that was like? Do you have any goddamn idea? Doing awful things and wanting to stop so badly you'd do anything, except you can't. You can't do anything. It's the worst thing there is.'

'That was -' Dean starts, meaning to say 'different'. 

But Sam doesn't let him get the word out. He turns and puts the weapon down, holding it easy by his side (too easy, Dean doesn't like him with a gun in his hand right now), and laughs harshly. 'A demon?' he says. '"But that was a demon?" I meant _Lucifer_ , Dean. Just cos you got my bones jumped by an angel doesn't mean it's better.'

'Please, Sammy,' Dean says. 'Your body shut down - he's fixing you. That's all. As soon as you're better, he's out, I swear. But the trials, they cooked you, man. The doctors said you were all burned up inside, all your organs - the next step they were talking about was friggin' brain death, and, and this Ezekiel guy, he turns up, saves my ass from a random stunt-angel who wanted to turn me into a short kebab, and tries to heal you.'

'From the inside.'

'Not at the start,' says Dean desperately. 'But more angels came and they were not messing about, and … and I ran out of options, Sam.'

'Get him out of me, Dean,' Sam growls low, eyes wide and whites showing. 'I can't - you don't understand. Knowing he's there, it's like an itch I can't scratch. I don't care what happens, I can't - if something happens … no. I can't be a vessel again, Dean. I won't. I won't carry another one of those sons of bitches a fucking step further.' He gestures at himself with the gun and Dean flinches. 'Don't make me do this again.'

'If he leaves you die,' Dean snaps. 'And then it's all for nothing.'

'If he stays, I go nuts, and how is that better?' Sam asks flatly. 'I'm serious, Dean. I got too much flapping around loose up there, I can't risk someone poking around in it, even if the very freaking idea of having one of _them_ all up in me again didn't make me want to throw up and scrub all my skin off.' He rubs the grip of the Taurus over his other arm like he's scratching an itch. 'I swear, Dean, I can't - I don't understand. Don't you get it? They're fucking leeches, man, they need bodies so they lie to get them, and I … he's letting me drive now, sure, but he doesn't have to. How long's it gonna be before he takes over and makes me … Last time I - I said I'd kill myself before I said yes, and I didn't, and I should have, and God, don't make me do this again,' Sam pleads. 'I need my fucking body to be _mine_ , Dean. Or I don't know what I'll do.'

 _What happens when you've decided I can't be trusted again?_ asks Sam a week ago in the back of Dean's head. _Who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me? Another angel -?_

Sam wants to die and Dean thought he was saving him but he was just giving him another reason to pull the trigger. Sometimes the monsters _aren't_ out there. 

'Get him out of me, Dean,' Sam pleads, scratching again like he can't help himself. He doesn't know, Dean realises. He thinks possession is ten tenths of the law, just like Meg and Lucifer. If Dean just keeps his mouth shut, if he goes and gets books and does late nights researching and says the right things, maybe he can keep Sam happy _and_ healthy just long enough … 

… if he lies. And he can't. He just can't any more.

'He said you'd be able to … to eject him, if you wanted,' Dean says, before he can talk himself out of it. 

'Me?'

'He said he couldn't stay in you if you wanted him out bad enough.' Dean shrugs. 'Didn't say how.'

A look of intense relief floods across Sam's face, and then a look of pain, something Dean's too familiar with, hates more than he's ever hated anything. The Taurus clatters to the concrete floor and Sam drops like a stone onto his knees, catches himself against the barrier in front of the target range before he can keel head-first onto the ground, and Dean catches him a second later. 

_Why did you fucking tell him, you stupid son of a bitch? You might as well've jammed his gun in his mouth and told him to pull the trigger._

'Jesus, Sam, you can't just - it's too soon to - ' Dean pleads, trying to hold him up while Sam just looks at him, blinking and dazed and like he's slipping away. 'You can't leave me, Sammy.' He's crying again, and the tears burn his eyes, forced out like acid. 'You hear me? Don't you fucking die on me.'

'Don't wanna leave you,' Sam says sloppily and softly, like a concussion victim, like Dean's stupid and this is obvious. 'S'not - s'never what I meant. Just tired, Dean. So tired. Tired of fighting. Jus' wanna be me. Myself,' he says, flopping like a ragdoll. 'Younme, Dean. Too crowded in here.'

There's a blue flicker when he blinks, then his eyes clear back to hazel-green, sloppy-dilated too wide in the left, too pinprick small in the right, like there's something going on behind them.

'Ezekiel,' Dean grits out, pulling Sam back until he can fold into a sitting position against the wall. 'If you can hear me, don't fight this. Just go, man. And thanks. You …if you find a vessel again, look us up. But Sammy can take it from here.' 

Just for a split second, that alien, ancient look comes into Sam's eyes and Dean knows it isn't his brother back there, but then white light fills the room and Dean has to shield his face, and by the time he looks back it's definitely Sam slumped all boneless, unconscious, against the wall.

And they're back to square one.

Except this time Dean's going to do what he should have done all along, and give Sam something other than himself to pull a trigger at. He's going to fight shadows for his brother, _with_ his brother, whether they're real or not.

They can be scared together, if they have to be scared. But Sam's not going anywhere without Dean, not ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> I blame these lyrics:
> 
> _And I will take you away from this emergency_   
>  _At the end of the day you're your own worst enemy_   
>  _And it can take you to heaven, put you through hell_   
>  _Just as long as you don't look down_   
>  _We can do it together, into my arms_   
>  _Know that nothing can hurt you now_


End file.
